Colors
by Sparker
Summary: One shot fic. A newsie reflects about his life......how something we never think too much about encompasses so many things around him. Rated for language. *Note: Do NOT read reviews before story. MAJOR SPOLIERS THERE!*


DISCLAIMER: I do not own any newsies. Yay for me. That is why I am the way I am......deprived.  
  
Thank you to JP for reading and critiquing!! (He he I thanked you anyway.)  
  
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Colors.  
  
They rule my life.  
  
Everything is a color, everything is a shade.  
  
Nothing is black or white.  
  
My days are blue; in the winter when my bones ache and the cold is so intense I shiver constantly, so much that I don't even notice anymore when my skin turns purple.  
  
That's another color, purple. The color of Skittery's lips in the middle of January, clashing horribly with his pink undershirt.  
  
Pink. So many things are pink. Roses and cotton candy and that girl I saw yesterday, her lips.  
  
Pink symbolizes what I can't have.  
  
And green. The grass in the pathetic garden next to the Lodging House, the spinach Tibby's serves when there's nothing else to make. Green is the color of my eyes, angry when one of my boy's is hurting. Hurting because I'm too macho to fix his pain.  
  
I'm Jack Kelly, and I don't ever feel pain.  
  
The sun is yellow, bright and hot when I don't want it, in the mornings when I have to go out selling. The dark mustard on the corn-beef and rye sandwich that man is eating over there.  
  
I haven't eaten a real meal in two days.  
  
Silver. Coins and money and happiness, spilling into other's palms, escaping from me because I was damned the day I was born.  
  
I'm a newsie, after all.  
  
Another color that I'm familiar with - red. Red of blood and sweat and tears, mingling together to from the lifeblood of a newsie. This is what we live on, like it or not. This is what we are made of. Toil and work and suffering.  
  
Brown of leather. Whoever said life in poverty builds character - whoever said that money cant buy happiness - come live my life for a day or two. Come walk in my worn shoes for a mile or three.  
  
And then say those fucking words to my face.  
  
Black is ever-present in my life. The light at the end of the tunnel is never shining for a newsie. We are in eternal darkness, living each day the same. We go through the motions, the grind wearing us to the bone and never ending.  
  
When will it end, we ask. Every day.  
  
When will all us get our chance to make something better of this hell we call a life?  
  
It will only end with one thing. One color, that will change it all forever.  
  
White.  
  
White of the angle's coming to take my soul, freed from its broken body, away into the light and cleanliness and hope that heaven contains.  
  
But nothing is ever white. Not the shirts we wear, grimy with soot and dirt. Not our teeth, yellowed with nicotine and caffeine. Most certainly not our eyes, bloodshot with the cheap wine we guzzle by the gallon, to drown our sufferings in a sea of colors that swirl around us, blocking everything else out.  
  
That's another color that is unattainable. White.  
  
The stuff dreams are made of.  
  
Then there are combinations - the black and white of newspapers, heavy and slick with the ink that is never quite dry. That is the best and worst combination, mix of tints that I can think of. Nothing else comes to mind, actually.  
  
Who has time to be creative when you live each day in a muddle of colors; colors you can't distinguish?  
  
Colors.  
  
All over.  
  
They rule my life.  
  
But nothing is ever black and white, good or bad.  
  
Each color had a good side to it, after all.  
  
The blue of Davey's eyes that light up after someone tells a good joke. Green of the dollar bill a man gave me in the street two weeks ago. Silver of the coins that jingle in my pocket after a long day of selling; black of the new vest Sarah made for me; brown of the old envelope that holds me Santa Fe brochure. And the red of a rose, pushing frantically through the hard dirt of the street in Central park; pink of Spot's suspenders when I snap them and make him jump. Yellow of a giggle that I catch from a little boy one day, untainted still by reality.  
  
Those little things, glimpses of colors, are what keep us going all the time.  
  
It's not much, but it's something.  
  
Everything is a shade.  
  
Most things are colored badly, spreading over a newsie's life and making it difficult. Hard. Depressing.  
  
Most of the time.  
  
But sometimes, that color can bring the happiness, the joy of living into the bleakness, replacing for a while the white that never comes.  
  
Colors, they rule my life.  
  
I'm a newsie, after all. 


End file.
